


blackbird

by neptuneslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Depressed Peter Parker, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, insert typical lorde promo tag here, some waxing poetic bullshit, this turned out a little dark my b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neptuneslight/pseuds/neptuneslight
Summary: He wonders if Icarus knew what he was doing. If he laughed in the face of death. Or if he was just a stupid, scared kid who didn’t have another way out.History has a habit of repeating itself. The only thing that really changes is its victims.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 94
Collections: Irondad Fic Exchange 2020





	blackbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galactic_cam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galactic_cam/gifts).



> filling galactic-cam’s prompt request of “gifted kid burn out” for the irondad fic exchange  
> -  
> listen to [this](https://open.spotify.com/track/22TntnVO3lQNDR5nsvxGRs?si=-OkoBUURScOpDm6-USjqdw) if ya want

The 37 glares at him from the computer screen, angry and red. 

Peter exhales and squeezes his hands into fists. He knew he’d failed that semester test when he handed it in. Knew that none of the material stuck in his head, that Regency lit was impossible to retain on his best days. 

He blinks once, twice, but the number doesn’t go away. It doesn’t shift into something else. He’s not misreading an 87; he failed his fucking english exam. 

His computer screen turns off, and the sudden absence of the grade portal is all it takes for tears to well up in his eyes. The overwhelming urge to punch something shoots through him, and Peter shoves himself away from his desk. The wheels under his chair squeak as they roll to a stop, but it does nothing to help the anger simmering under his skin. 

He takes a deep breath. Tries again when it catches in his chest. Slowly, as he counts the birds that fly past his window, his anger faded into something more manageable — disappointment. 

Peter rises from his chair and slides it back under his desk. The trek to the kitchen is somber, and feels like it takes five minutes instead of thirty seconds. 

He grabs the first cup he can get his hands on and sticks it under the faucet, ignoring the tremor that shakes his hand every couple seconds. 

“Hey, sweetie,” May greets from the couch. She’s still half dressed in her scrubs; her blue pants are replaced by sweats. Something true crime is playing on the TV. “How’d your test go?”

The disappointment in his chest grows thorns, and he stills. 

“It was okay,” he responds quietly. “I didn’t do as well as I hoped, but…”

Peter lets himself trail off as he slides his socked feet over the floor. He can’t look at her. Instead, he takes a sip of his water and stares determinedly out the small window over the sink. A dog barks from the TV program. 

“Well, that’s okay. Better luck next time, right?” May says. “I’m gonna order from Lo’s tonight, you want your usual?”

Peter drains the rest of his cup before answering. “Sounds great,” he says as he sets the cup down in the sink. His words feel like rocks in his mouth. _37._ “I’m probably gonna head out soon.”

May looks over at him, and this time he can actually meet her gaze. “Eat something and be safe, yeah?”

A forced smile flickers onto his lips. “Yeah.”

His screen is still off when he gets back to his desk, so Peter shakes his mouse to wake it up as he sits again. 

37\. 37. 37. 

The mouse is a brick under his hand as he scrolls through his averages. He’s failing four of his classes now, including English. 

He sighs something heavy and leans back in his chair. He can’t even bring himself to care enough to fix it. The blankness of his ceiling stares back at him, unyielding. 

His head flops over so he’s staring out the window instead. Peter can see the red of his suit in his peripheral, and the urge to be productive (to ignore more of his failure) blooms inside him. 

Peter rises. 

/

“C’mon, Gargan, why don’t we just go back to prison like a good little boy,” Peter calls as he swings through the sky. 

“Back off, kiddo,” Gargan spits, leaping to the next building. “You have no idea what I could do to you.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Oh wow, I’m so scared. Terrified, even.” He swings a sharp corner and launches himself higher in the sky. “These original threats really leave me shaking in my boots.”

His spider sense blares at the base of his neck and barely manages to dodge a large, slimy, green projectile Gargan throws at him. It’s halfway to the ground when he thinks to stop it before it hits someone on the streets. Peter whips around mid-air and covers the projectile in a load of webs, turning his back to the scorpion wanna-be parkouring through Manhattan.

Peter doesn’t turn around fast enough to escape the massive hit Gargan lands across his back.

The next thing he knows, he’s on his back, blinking up at the dim sky and unable to take a breath. 

It takes far too long for him to recover. The defeat stings more than the rocks digging into his back and the cut across the back of his head. Peter’s too disoriented to swing anywhere; it’s a good thing that New Yorkers had the sense to stay in during the middle of the night. 

There’s a burnt out, boarded up restaurant at the edges of Hell’s Kitchen that he stumbles upon, with his vision swimming and a massive migraine sprouting. He manages to pull one of the boards off, a looser one towards the back, and stumbles into the restaurant. His legs give out the second he touches one of the plastic-sheeting booths, and he curls up in the corner.

He’s just going to close his eyes, just for a second. Just to rest.

It’s the sun shining directly in his eyes and a crick in his neck that wakes him the next morning, too late to even think about making it to school. He groans when he sees the four missed calls from May, and twice as many unread messages. 

Peter pushes himself out of the corner of the booth and shakes out the stiffness in his limbs before squeezing out the window he came through. The streets aren’t as crowded as he expected, and he’s able to swing away without pulling that much attention to himself. 

Huh. So people must just not come around here often. 

The December air bites through the suit, and the heater does nothing to stop the chill from spreading to his bones. The sky is still a dark grey, but the most recent bout of snow has melted into ice and frost. 

He flies home on autopilot, only to be confronted by a bright blue sticky note attached to the outside of his window l. _We’re talking when I get back tonight, —May,_ it reads. 

Peter balls the sticky up and tosses it in his trashcan the second he steps foot in his room, and then immediately crashes in bed. 

/

Tony doesn’t look up when he asks, “Have you started applications yet?” 

Peter flinches, shoulders rising halfway to his chin. His hand stills and puts a stop to the scribbling that’s taking over his calculus homework. 

He pops one knuckle. Two. 

“Not yet.” His voice doesn’t shake. “I’m, uh. I guess I’m just waiting for the right place to jump out.”

This does get Tony to look up. His gaze is sharp and dissecting as he looks at Peter, and Peter’s hands twitch around his pencil. But his expression melts into something more amiable in less than a second, leaving Peter wondering if he just imagined it. 

“Better get to it,” Tony says lightly. He comes around his work bench, crossing his arms and leaning against it so he can look at Peter. “MIT’s admission closes soon.”

Peter smiles as genuinely as he can muster. “Like I even need to try. I’d be surprised if you haven’t already bribed the admission’s office.” 

“Nuh-uh, buddy.” Tony flicks a pen cap at him, almost clipping him in the forehead. “No intern of mine gets accepted without some of his own merit.”

A series of quiet beeps comes from behind the couch, and Peter’s lips quirk up at the familiar sound. He lets himself ignore Tony’s last remark as DUM-E rolls around the corner, opting instead to drop his pencil and give the small bot a few pats. 

“Seriously, though,” Tony says. His tone is something Peter doesn’t hear often — something open and soft and genuine. “If you need any help starting your application process or figuring things out, I’m here. I know you got May to help you along too, but I’m here.”

His cheeks flush red. DUM-E remains in front of him, claw spinning rhythmically, and that’s where Peter chooses to focus. 

Hearing this should make him feel better, more secure. Instead, it makes the nausea in his stomach worse, because Tony is _trying_ and Peter’s too embarrassed to ask for help. 

DUM-E bumps into his knees. Peter hands him a plastic case to crunch and stammers out a _thanks._ Tony backs off. 

His calc. homework doesn’t get finished. 

/

The serenity of the old restaurant soothes him in a way he hasn’t felt in a while. 

He’s not really sure how he made it back to this place, and the plastic covers under him squeak as he shifts, as if it’s agreeing with him. It’s somehow become his safe spot over the weeks, a retreat for when everything gets to be too much. The air lies stagnant here, and filters through his lungs like mist on a mountain. 

There’s a thin layer of dust coating the tables, the booths, the ground, and lingering in the air; it’s only disturbed where Peter had walked and sat and touched. The only discordance is manmade, his own disruption. There’s no one to blame here.

A streetlamp burns through the gap of the boards, shining directly into his eyes, and Peter tucks his knees under his chin. His shins press hard against the table’s edge, and an ache pounds behind his temples. He doesn’t wanna look at the lights anymore; his eyes slide shut and he rests his cheek on his kneecap.

It’s his little hideout. His treehouse. 

Something rears in his chest just long enough to disrupt the serenity. He cracks an eye open and hugs his legs closer. 

A bang comes from Peter’s left, about a hundred feet into the shadows. He freezes completely, eyes scanning the darkness for any movement. 

People don’t come here. Not during the day, definitely not at night. His hand drifts to his mask, squeezing the familiar, scuffed fabric in his fist. 

Another bang. Peter’s heart is pushing against his rib cage, and he slides the mask over his face. His fingers curl into his palm, ready to hit the trigger on his web shooters, as adrenaline slices through the mist in his lungs. 

A flash of a shadow races through the board cracks before coming to a stop outside his entrance window, outline fading in and out of the darkness. Peter freezes completely, hoping his stillness would fool the impeder into blindness. But the shape doesn’t even stutter, and it seems like it’s almost waiting for Peter to make a move. 

The light catches a sliver of the figure, and a deep red suit and unmistakable horns sends a thrill of recognition through him. There’s no way he could miss the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, even if he tried.

Daredevil sinks back into the shadows, and moves away without another sound. His invisibility makes Peter wonder just how purposeful his approach was. 

Slowly, the dust settles in the hole left by Daredevil. The serenity slides back into his booth. The mist gets thicker.

/

His room is dark — heavy greys shadowed with blacks — and everything is muffled. The dim light that manages to slide through his blinds and poke through his curtains paints lines across his bedroom wall, and he counts them four times before losing place. 

His backpack is pushed into the corner, half buried under worn clothes and a pair of sneakers. He thinks about opening it for one, maybe two seconds before rolling over. 

The bed sheets are soft. His pillow is cool against his cheek. The old quilt his mom gave him is grasped loosely in his hand, and Ben’s worn half to hell sweatshirt is a comforting weight against his body. 

Peter closes his eyes and lets himself sleep. 

He dreams of dust and imploding atoms and clots of blood slipping through his fingers.

/

It’s DD that helps him when he loses to the Scorpion again. 

He’s pretty sure he has a concussion and his ribs grind together with every breath and he’s got enough gashes on his torso to rival a B-rate horror movie, but—

Yeah. There really is no but. 

DD finds him huddled against the wall of his hiding place, shivering and bleeding all over the place, and drags him back to his apartment. Peter is half-conscious for the trip, only picking up the occasional fall or flash of an address. 

Before he knows it, he’s dumped on the bathroom floor of an apartment, hugging the lip of the tub with his back exposed and an icepack taped to his ribs.

Daredevil cleans and dresses Peter’s wounds, and forces him to send a text to May while he stays camped out on his floor. He also gives him a bottle of water, a pillow, and tells him not to die. Peter fades in and out of consciousness for hours on the bathroom floor as his back stitches itself back together. When he gets back to himself in the morning, there’s a note taped to the outside of the door. 

_Had to go to work. Try to stay alive. Matt._

/

Peter makes friends with the crows in Hell’s Kitchen and the pigeons in Queens. 

It’s easy, really, when he becomes such a fixture in the sky that he stops scaring them away. They go from scattering the second he comes into vision to balking away to reluctantly accepting his presence. That’s as good as friends in his book.

It’s seven o’clock and he’s tucked away in the recesses of Manhattan, straddling the line between HK and Chelsea. The crows are out with him as he perches on the top of a fire escape, settled on the ledges and rooftops around him. Some chatter to him as he fidgets in his spot, trying to keep as out of vision as possible from the pedestrians below.

He makes the mistake of shaking out his limbs, and jolts some of the crowd into action. The crows drop damaged pitch black feathers behind on the roof like dandruff as they take off, scattering into the dark sky. They vanish after a few seconds, but the feathers remain. 

The feathers drag up an old memory of a story about a boy who learned how to fly, who flew too high and suffered for it. 

Peter wants to know if Icarus’s wings were really made of gold and candlewax, or if they were dark and heavy, a mimicry of vultures’ wings. Wants to know if the story didn’t want to reflect how morbid the death of Icarus really was -- a victim of impossible creation.

When he thinks about it, Icarus was doomed to fall from the start. There’s a difference between the fragile, hollow bird bones and the ones filled with lead.

He wonders if Icarus knew what he was doing. If he laughed in the face of death. Or if he was just a stupid, scared kid who didn’t have another way out.

History has a habit of repeating itself. The only thing that really changes is its victims.

/

Peter’s day goes like this. 

He sleeps through his alarm. Skips breakfast, zones out on the train and misses his stop. 

He gets to school just as first period is ending, forces his legs towards his second, and then sleep through it. 

Ned gives him his calc homework to copy in the hall, and he gets exactly four and a half questions down before the bell rings. Mr. Roberts gives him a 14 and a pink slip asking to see him after class.

Peter walks out of school before lunch, and goes deep into Hell’s Kitchen to hide. 

He only moves again when someone cries out a few blocks over, and comes home at two in the morning with a black eye and the knuckles split open on both hands. 

/

“What are you running from?” Daredevil asks him.

Peter adjusts in his spot on the roof, tucking his hands under his thighs and tapping the backs of his heels against the building. He doesn’t answer. 

The wind that blows through the sky is borderline freezing. The hard breezes pierce through his suit, needing his body into a shivering, twitching ball of tension. 

Daredevil crosses his arms over his chest and that’s the only sign he feels the chill. Peter closes his eyes and leans into it. 

A door slams a block over, followed by angry shouting in Italian, jolting him out of his trance. He shifts lightly on the roof, pulling his hands out from under his and pressing his feet to the wall. His body is tense, ready to intervene if necessary, but it dies off within the minute. 

Crows settle on the edge a few feet away from him. Their black eyes glint and regard him carefully, like they’re trying to figure out if he has anything they can grab. DD picks a stone up off the roof and tosses it at the birds, startling them into flight.

The breeze comes back, and he shivers when it doesn’t back down. The grey night sky swirls under the layers of lights and pollution, and if he concentrates hard enough, Peter can almost see the stars. 

_What are you running from?_

He’s not even sure. 

/

This time, Peter goes to the port. He wants to be alone. 

/

before the bite —

Peter was the third best student in his grade going into highschool. Third to Betty and second to Ned. MJ kept a close fourth. 

Freshman year was a hard adjustment, but a welcome one. It was exponentially more stressful than anything he’d experienced, but it was fun. Challenging. 

The only bump on the metaphorical road was PE. Peter struggled to run half a mile before needing his inhaler. Couldn’t throw very hard in dodgeball. Had to sit out during the basketball unit. PE sucked ass. 

But other than that, he was fine. Good, even. His teachers made allowances on the rare occasions he needed them, and he kept his rank as third in his class. (He even passed Ned at the end of his first semester, but that only lasted for a week or two.)

He was good. He was good. 

after the bite —

Two minutes. That was all it took for his life to implode. 

In two minutes, two minutes of kneeling on top of his uncle’s limp body, his world had shifted in an incomprehensible, unsolvable way. 

In two minutes, Peter changed from a stupid, selfish kid into someone who’d killed the man who raised him. 

Ben’s death was on him, and there was nothing he could do to fix that. 

Anything outside of the realm of grief, the sickness festering in his home, faded into the background. For weeks, he stopped living his life. Stopped caring. He just existed in a broken home, barely eating or drinking or moving. But soon enough, all that grief slipped into anger, slimy and dark and consuming. 

Spider-Man emerged through a hunt for vengeance, but very quickly transformed into something else. 

_With great power —_

Spider-Man pulled him out of that hole. He gave Peter something to work for, something that let him make a change. And Tony gave Spider-Man a jumpstart he never could’ve imagined.

Peter made the mask his new anchor. It kept him grounded, but never restrained him to the earth when things became too much. 

Spider-Man pulled him out of the sea. 

And through him, Peter learned how to fly.

(what it’s like to conquer —)

now —

Now, Peter feels like he’s falling. 

Like the parachute is still wrapped around his body and there’s no amount of fighting that’ll get it off. 

(broken, melting wings, shedding and cracking around him, golden bones and tired ligaments popping in the white, white sunlight)

Like he’s sinking in the lake all over again. Like the cold water has a grip around him so tight, God himself couldn’t pry Peter from it. 

(waves the size of mountains and water the color of dusk, foam glinting under the light, wings slicing through the air, reduced to marrow and bone, ancient creatures writhing just under the surface of the sea)

But this time, he’s by himself. There’s no one to pull him out and let him choke the water up. 

He is completely alone. 

(— and what it’s like to burn.)

/

The people of New York tend to like him. A good chunk of them are lukewarm, another tolderates him, and a small percentage outright dislikes him. But generally, they like him. New York likes Spider-Man.

But New York City itself is hostile. Ruthless and cutthroat and dangerous and _beautiful,_ and it hates everyone that has the audacity to call it their home. New York City is unsympathetic and cold, and treats Spider-Man just like Peter Parker.

He’s Spider-Man. He’s saving people. He's helping his city. But sometimes it seems he’s helping a city that doesn’t want to be helped.

/

_What are you running from?_

_Everything._

/

“You, um—” His voice cracks from disuse, catching in his esophagus. Peter clears his throat as his hand taps against his thigh. “You remember when you asked what I was running from?”

Matt nods. “You didn’t have an answer.”

Peter’s hand stills. 

Matt doesn’t have to say it. _Or you just couldn’t say it out loud_ hangs in the air, ugly and red. 

He swallows and feels pinpricks down his throat.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know why—” He breaks off with a sharp inhale and rocks back, the freezing pipe sticking out of the roof digging into his back. For once the cold blocks out the ache of the gravel. “I don’t know what I’m _doing,”_ he spits. 

He’s not making any sense, the logical side of his brain acknowledges. The words falling from his mouth aren’t connecting, and they carry no meaning to anyone but the speaker. But the skin under his eyes is tacky and wet, and the mask sticks to it uncomfortably. 

Matt is quiet for minutes, allowing the howl of the wind to fill the air. 

“You’ve told this to anyone else?” he finally asks.

Peter’s silence speaks enough for him. The wind rises to a pitch, severing the steady howl. 

“I met Fogs in law school, right?” Matt starts. “Probably ten years after my dad died.”

Peter tenses. Matt doesn’t talk about his dad, and he doesn’t like where this seems to be going. 

“I was still angry. Pissed beyond belief, actually. I was lashing out, drinking every night, getting into fights. Foggy was the only one who could even get me to come back to the dorm at night, and I still fought against him every step of the way.”

“It’s not about —” he snaps. He has to take a deep breath to calm down; DD’s trying. “It’s not about my person.”

“Then what is it about?” Matt shifts his focus towards him, but Peter doesn’t look away from the city in front of him.

Peter has to think about this seriously. He owes it to DD to take it seriously. So he thinks, and maybe lands on an answer. But he can’t look at Matt when he responds. 

“I hated the path I was going down. And I hated that there’s not anything to do to fix it.” He chews on the inside of his cheek. “So I stopped trying. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

The wind drops off. Suddenly, the city is too quiet. The clouds existing in the atmosphere carry the threat of snow tomorrow.

“I guess it’s about that. The fact that I stopped trying.”

Matt turns his gaze back out to the city.

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

/

Peter stands outside the lab for fifteen minutes before Tony finally comes out and demands to know what’s wrong. He panics for twenty seconds straight before realizing this is exactly why he came, and if he was ever going to do this, he was going to do this now.

He’s clutching his phone in his hand like a lifeline, and the white-knuckled grip does nothing but make the lines in Tony’s face deepen. 

“I—” he tries. 

It’s too hard to keep the eye contact. He drops Tony’s gaze, focusing on his beat Skechers instead.

“I need… _help,”_ he forces out. “I…”

He glances up just enough to catch a flash of the reaction in front of him before falling back down. It’s already too much, too much concern, too much sympathy, and too much horror and guilt and humiliation.

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

_Why is it this hard?_

He can’t say anything else. His face is hot and flushed, and embarrassment has a strangling grip on his throat. Instead, he opens his grade portal on his phone before shoving the device away from himself, almost jabbing it into Tony’s chest. 

The hall is dead silent except for his strained breathing. 

Tony stares at the screen for a minute or two before lowering it, and his expression is filled with so much emotion that it sends a pain down Peter’s sternum.

A shiver runs through his body. But instead of taking everything back, instead of running away, Peter meets Tony's eyes, and with his strongest voice, says, “I’m messing everything up.”

Tony hands back his phone, nods his head once, and says, “Alright.”

/ 

Things get better after that. 

Peter starts seeing a therapist, once a week at 11:30 am. His absences aren’t counted against him anymore, and his teachers give him extensions on most of the homework and projects without a second glance. His english teacher let him retake his exam for an 80, and his other classes gave him some simple extra credit to bump him to a pass. He has no idea what May and Tony told the school, and he has no intention of asking. 

He doesn’t see DD as much. Peter spends a lot more time in Queens, determined to help his home out first, and Matt doesn’t tend to stray from Hell’s Kitchen if he can help it. Whenever he does pass by, he makes sure to give a shout.

He puts in applications to MIT, Columbia, Bentley, everything he’s expected to. His fingers stay crossed when he hits the submit button, but at least they aren’t shaking.

Then there’s the places he applies that he doesn’t tell anyone about. Places like Pratt and Moore and RISD. These are sent out with his favorite photos Ben’s old camera attached, and the anticipation sits heavy in his chest. These are the schools he won’t tell anyone about, not until he gets an answer back. It’s terrifying to wait, but somehow it’s the best he’s felt in months.

Things are getting better.

**Author's Note:**

> i tried something new with this style, and i’m not sure how exactly it turned out lmfaoo but yeah um obviously the story of icarus became a huge part of this, and while that was not at all my intent, it probably became my favorite part of this  
> thanks for reading you guys <3


End file.
